Archive for Blog

Hey everyone! A little update with me. Sigh, I knew this would happen. As soon as I release the first chapter of a big new ongoing comic (see my latest comic, Little Warrior Chapter 1), life throws a spanner in the works, albeit a shiny beautiful spanner that I’m excited about.

So, I’ve been looking for a new project to start and have been pitching various book ideas to publishers the past 6-12 months. Two children’s books didn’t impress anyone. But it’s true when they say ‘third time’s the charm’, as my third pitch has been sold!

It’s a new middle grade series, with the first book out next year. I can’t say much about it yet, but needless to say, the past month or so has been crazy. It will only be for the Australian/New Zealand market initially and hopefully sold to other regions in the future. My publisher is really excited about the series and eager to get the first 2 books out as soon as possible, BUT that means they’ve given me a pretty unforgiving deadline and I’m currently smack bang in the writing/penciling stage of Book 1.

I’ll also be starting a new teaching job one day a week in October at a local school in Perth, working with kids and teaching them the power of COMICS! I’m excited about that, being able to get out of the house and into the world instead of being holed up like a creepy recluse all the time.

So unfortunately ZEN PENCILS and LITTLE WARRIOR will be taking a back seat. I’ve penciled and inked Chapter 2 of Little Warrior, but it still needs colouring. I’m still committed to it but it’s going to take even longer to complete now, I really don’t know when the new chapters will be getting released. I hope you understand.

Love you and can’t wait to share the new book with you. It’s definitely nothing like Zen Pencils, it’s straight up for kids – silly, goofy and full of adventure.?
– Gav

Jeez, can you believe it’s the end of year already? When the hell did that happen?? How has your year been? Mine has been pretty … steady. Career-wise, I’ve continued to work hard on Zen Pencils – most of the year has been spent working on comics that will form part of my new book collection, which I’ll tell you more about later. Personally things have been great, my daughter is keeping me busy and I’ve been helping look after her more as my wife returned to work. I’ve probably struggled a bit to find a good work/life balance – working from home and having a cute little human running around does mean my productivity has dropped a little. But it’s one of the main reasons I quit my job all those years ago to start Zen Pencils, to have more time for family and life so it’s all good. read more

Hi everyone, I’m really excited to introduce my new book collection CREATIVE STRUGGLE: Illustrated Advice From Masters of Creativity. The comics included have never been collected before and will be released on January 16, 2018.read more

Good news, I’ve revamped the Translations section, which now has over 350 comics in Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and French! One of my goals this year was to (finally) make an effort to get all my translated comics in one place and make them easier to view and navigate. Plus, you can now comment on individual comics and share them just as you would the English ones. I’d love to make Zen Pencils an international destination that has readers from all over the world, so please share this with as many as your friends as possible. All of these translations have been done by awesome readers who have volunteered their time.

HELP WITH TRANSLATIONSI’m hoping to include more languages in the future. If you are interested in translating comics yourself, have some background with translations and also basic design/layout knowledge contact me via email. You will be required to edit and layout the words on the comics yourself, I just provide blank comics with the English quotes removed. Due to the number of emails I get, it may take some time for me to respond.

A big THANK YOU to all the readers who have helped so far with translations!!

REMINDER
The Korean and French editions of my first book collection were also recently released.

Hello my beautiful readers! Get 20% off Zen Pencils posters this week, including some new designs I’ve added to the store. The Frida Kahlo Strange Like Me is now available. I’ve had to edit the comic slightly after finding out the quote is misattributed to Kahlo. You can read the full story on the updated comic post. There’s also Rumi’s The Guest House, Sophie Scholl’s The Fire Within and my own story The Calling. Choose from another 50+ designs in the store!

March 8 is International Women’s Day, so to celebrate here are some of the best Zen Pencils comics featuring quotes from amazing women. Women’s rights is one of the most important issues we face and I try to feature strong and inspiring women, either the women whose quotes I adapt or the characters I create. This is not something I always did well (the first 100 comics I did predominately feature quotes from men). I’d like to think I’m a bit more mature and socially aware now and I think my comics reflect that. Featuring kick-ass women on this site is even more important to me since my wife and I are expecting a baby girl in a few months, and I’d like to be able to read her these comics in the future. – Gav